Hard Light Productions Forums
Hosted Projects - Standalone => Fate of the Galaxy => Topic started by: aRaven on February 21, 2009, 10:11:44 am
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according to ILM's speed/maneuverability chart, the y-wing is as fast as the xwing at 80MGLT.
I like the X-Wings speed at 100MGLT as it was in the games, lets say just put the ywing at 95 MGLT, 5MGLT faster than the gunboat!
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Personally, I think the majority of discrepancies between Star Wars fans regarding craft tech specs stem from the venerable X-wing and T.I.E. sims. While they were great in their own right (lord only knows how many days of my life I lost to them :p), they were horribly inaccurate. The sheer popularity they had mainstreamed the belief that the specs in the games were accurate despite them actually contradicting what LFL had already published (which were obviously less well known). Because of their incredible popularity, much of the EU used it as a basis for their material when including such craft. What a shame. The kicker is they were billed as Star Wars simulators, which enhanced the credibility they had in the minds of players.
Non-atmospheric maximum speed for the BTL-A4 Y-wing starfighter: 80 MGLT (X-wing/T.I.E. series), 70 MGLT (LFL/movies). The T-65b/c X-wing starfighter: 100 MGLT (X-wing/T.I.E. series), 80 MGLT (LFL/movies). The funny thing is, all the craft are much faster and more maneuverable in the films than they're portrayed in any Star Wars game. :lol: ;)
Of course, the Y-wing isn't the only starfighter that's had it's specs skewered in the good ol' X-wing & T.I.E. sims. It's just that the Y-wing is the most skewered in the least favorable way. lol Another example is the B-wing. Which was practically turned into a god. :lol:
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according to ILM's speed/maneuverability chart, the y-wing is as fast as the xwing at 80MGLT.
I like the X-Wings speed at 100MGLT as it was in the games, lets say just put the ywing at 95 MGLT, 5MGLT faster than the gunboat!
100 is a nice round number. 80 sounds so slow to me, unless actual play shows it's not. I think that's what it's going to take to debunk this.
Did anyone ever think that maybe max atmospheric speed doesn't equal max MGLT? If an X-wing's max speed is 1,050 Km/h both in atmosphere and vacuum, that's not much faster than the speed of sound, and we have fighters in the real world that can do well over mach 1. It'd take the Rebels forever at their speed to reach the Death Star (even though it too was approaching) or fly to a planet in system. Doesn't make any sense to me. They have to be moving faster than their atmospheric speeds.
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according to ILM's speed/maneuverability chart, the y-wing is as fast as the xwing at 80MGLT.
I like the X-Wings speed at 100MGLT as it was in the games, lets say just put the ywing at 95 MGLT, 5MGLT faster than the gunboat!
100 is a nice round number. 80 sounds so slow to me, unless actual play shows it's not. I think that's what it's going to take to debunk this.
Did anyone ever think that maybe max atmospheric speed doesn't equal max MGLT? If an X-wing's max speed is 1,050 Km/h both in atmosphere and vacuum, that's not much faster than the speed of sound, and we have fighters in the real world that can do well over mach 1. It'd take the Rebels forever at their speed to reach the Death Star (even though it too was approaching) or fly to a planet in system. Doesn't make any sense to me. They have to be moving faster than their atmospheric speeds.
Yeah, I hear ya. lol ;) 80 MGLT does sound rather slow, but only when when basing it on the games. In the films, 80 MGLT is much faster. :nod: Inaccurate representation of speed and maneuverability in Star Wars games has always been an issue. Granted, we don't know exactly how fast 80 MGLT technically is, but we get a pretty good idea from closely examining the films.
In actuality, atmospheric flight flight speed is separate from non-atmospheric. You have elements like wind resistance, gravity, etc. versus the engine thrust that play a role in a starfighter's atmospheric to non-atmospheric performance ratio. In the vast vacuum of space, they're not bound by the limitations of atmospheric flight.
There's been some speculation that enabling deflector shields while in atmospheric flight allows the craft to cut wind resistance. But that's never been stated or suggested by official LFL material, AFAIK.
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If the X-Wing goes 80 MGLT, then 1 MGLT is at least 3.65 m/s
We clocked it, frame by frame, the fastest an X-Wing is seen going on screen is 292 m/s
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Relative to what, exactly? *curious*
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To be honest I can't remember what we clocked the final speed off of, but it was either somewhere in the trench run scene or in the battle of endor when one skims overtop of a Star Destroyer's hull. Might have been in the DS2 tunnel drive as well. There was a lot of scenes I went through hehe
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I think it was the ISD hull skim, we knew it to have a length of 1.6km so traversing its length in about 5 and a half seconds gave us what we needed to know.
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If the X-Wing goes 80 MGLT, then 1 MGLT is at least 3.65 m/s
Amd how much will that be in FS units of measurement?
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FS units are m/s.
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Do we have any reliable information on the width of the Death Star trench? That would give us a more reliable measure of the fighters going at top speed, since 292 m/s is only 653 MPH, or Mach .88. I'm sure starfighters can travel faster than WWII fighters, even if Star Wars space combat was inspired by it.
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That may be true but I doubt we could have the game support it going any faster. As it stands I plan to use speeds like that as the absolute cap with full power to engines. Tiny snub fighters, only a fraction of the size of FS ships, are very difficult to hit at that speed for most players, but we're working on a solution for that as well.
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Wait, top speed? I misread that as acceleration earlier. :nervous:
I find it strange that you're trying to find a 'canon top speed' when Star Wars fighters are all equally fast. They're in space. Even a Star Destroyer can keep up with the Falcon, and the Falcon can keep up with most fighters. Maneuverability and acceleration are the names of the game for smaller ships in Star Wars, not speed.
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Do we have any reliable information on the width of the Death Star trench? That would give us a more reliable measure of the fighters going at top speed, since 292 m/s is only 653 MPH, or Mach .88. I'm sure starfighters can travel faster than WWII fighters, even if Star Wars space combat was inspired by it.
:wtf:
That IS faster than WW2 fighters. A whole lot faster. The fastest propeller driven fighters that saw combat action in WW2 were, I think, long-nosed Focke-Wulf 190 D models, which had top speed of 440 mph (or 710 km/h) at 37,000 ft (11 km). Dornier Do-335 was slightly faster, but it's combat record is afaik limited to one encounter with a Hawker Tempest flight (which were unable to catch it); it's specified top speed was 474 mph (765 km/h).
Messerschmitt Me-262 was obviously faster at 559 mph (900 km/h) but it was a jet. Heinkel He-162 Salamander aka Volksjäger was a tiny bit faster at 562 mph (wikipedia source) but that was a jet as well...
Mach 0.88 (at what altitude??) is something more like cruising speed of a modern jet airliner rather than level flight speed of any WW2 airplane. Obviously some airplanes of WW2 could withstand speeds like that in a dive, and there have been some stories about some planes breaching the sound barrier in a dive but that doesn't really count. And maneuverability at those speeds is really limited anyway.
Besides, typical combat turn speeds were something between 250-350 km/h in dogfights. Sustained maximum turn rates were also a lot less than you might think; high alpha maneuvering bleeds airspeed really fast. Of course, in space you dont' really need to worry about the kinetic/potential energy levels which actually makes it somewhat trickier for a game designer to balance the gameplay experience. And as much as TotallyGames deviated from the confirmed canon information, they did pretty good job on making the gameplay great fun (most of the time).
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If the X-Wing goes 80 MGLT, then 1 MGLT is at least 3.65 m/s
We clocked it, frame by frame, the fastest an X-Wing is seen going on screen is 292 m/s
Awesome! That's how I would've done it. lol ;)
Keep in mind the context of the scene you're trying to acquire stats. For example, you wouldn't be able to clock an accurate standard top speed for the Y-wings at 70 MGLT in the trench because they had transferred all power to their deflector shield systems. Hence reducing their potential maximum speed considerably. Likewise, Luke transferred power to the engines during his final mad dash to the exhaust port.
@Herra Tohtori: Well put. ;) You know your stuff. :yes:
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Obviously some airplanes of WW2 could withstand speeds like that in a dive
Yes, that's all I was referring to.
And maneuverability at those speeds is really limited anyway....<lots of technical details omitted for brevity>
Exactly! This was my point - the speed we have for the X-Wing maneuvering through the Battle of Endor is likely to be FAR less than their actual top speed, which we could more accurately gauge from their "going in at full throttle" during the trench run.
By the way, I applaud your superb knowledge of WWII aviation. I salute you.
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HT plays a lot of IL-2. And I'm sure he was a WW2 buff before that as well.
Now, the Y-wings did adjust their shields, but I don't remember them saying anything about transferring engine power to shields as much as transferring shield power to the front deflectors. Both the TG and FS games simulate this, in that you could still dump all your power to engines and still adjust the balance of your shield quadrants.
Also, Brand said that was at least 3.65 m/s. The X-wing might not have been going full out, meaning that if the ship was going 292 m/s and it wasn't maxed, then 80MGLT could be even faster. But again, we will have a hard time utilizing speeds even that fast, not just for playability but possibly also collision detection. If we use additive weapon velocities, two closing craft at 300 m/s, firing weapons traveling another 1500 m/s, the closing velocity is now 2100 m/s. I don't know what speed the engine might start having trouble, but I don't think any other mods have had speeds quite that high before.
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Well... bear in mind that there's two components to maneuverability: Attitude and vector. In space, the difference between the two is a lot bigger than in atmospheric ships (and FreeSpace, and "traditional" Star Wars game physics).
The attitude of an airplane largely defines it's vector as well. There's a little variation, but in most cases the airplane is going to the direction where it's nose is pointed at; if it doesn't, you're in big trouble since normal airplanes lose controllability when the AOA grows too high, and at too high speeds flying sideways tends to have adverse effects (which is what happened to Space Shuttle Columbia) to the airframe. So within the approved flight envelope, it's safe to say that airplanes go through the air into the direction they are pointed at (exceptions confirming the rule) because the airplane is designed to stabilize itself in relation to the airstream.
In space, there's no airstream so attitude vector and velocity vector are completely separate entities. The vector changes are what causes g-forces (though in Star Wars there's no need to worry about those), and attitude maneuverability isn't really limited by any relative speed, but vector maneuverability is limited by the acceleration of the ship and thus the turn radius is defined by the velocity in relation to some point of reference. I should probably elaborate that this is the case in real life physics, so it doesn't need to be that way in the game, but some nod to that direction would be great in my opinion.
In a nutshell - in FreeSpace2 and X-Wing series, when your nose points at some direction, you're flying into that direction immediately. In Real life, you need to change the vector as well as attitude. Beyond the Red Line (and, assumedly, Diaspora) and The Babylon Project are somewhere in the middle; neither railroad or newtonian flight dynamics. If railroad physics is zero and full newtonian is ten, I think BtRL is probably at five or six at normal mode and 8-9 at glide mode, TBP is perhaps 4-5 at normal flight, and I think a Star Wars sim would be well placed on, like, something between 2 and 4.
If it is possible, though, I would actually like two flight modes: One where attitude maneuverability is gradually reduced as reference velocity increases in order to keep the attitude and velocity vectors as similar as possible, and a more raw control flight mode where attitude maneuverability isn't limited, but correspondingly at high speeds the attitude and velocity vectors don't equalize as fast due to acceleration limits of the ships so controlled flight at high speeds would require more work. I don't know if I would want to see a full glide toggle on a star wars sim, though; I'll leave that question for the devs to answer.
:)
Chief: Yes, I was always interested in aviation and WW2 era airplanes especially.
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@chief1983: Well, the exact words Dutch used were "Switch all power to front deflector screen. Switch all power to front deflector screen." So it's a good bet they did. lol :p
Personally, I believe that was the first of a few tactical mistakes they made on their approach to the exhaust port. Had they made it, they Y-wing's short & long range targeting computers wouldn't have had much trouble hitting the target, if any.
@Herra Tohtori: lol You are a force to be reckoned with. I've always been fascinated with WWI & WWII era aircraft, but my bread and butter was more toward the Korean & Vietnam conflict era aircraft. :nod:
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Well... bear in mind that there's two components to maneuverability: Attitude and vector. In space, the difference between the two is a lot bigger than in atmospheric ships (and FreeSpace, and "traditional" Star Wars game physics).
The attitude of an airplane largely defines it's vector as well. There's a little variation, but in most cases the airplane is going to the direction where it's nose is pointed at; if it doesn't, you're in big trouble since normal airplanes lose controllability when the AOA grows too high, and at too high speeds flying sideways tends to have adverse effects (which is what happened to Space Shuttle Columbia) to the airframe. So within the approved flight envelope, it's safe to say that airplanes go through the air into the direction they are pointed at (exceptions confirming the rule) because the airplane is designed to stabilize itself in relation to the airstream.
In space, there's no airstream so attitude vector and velocity vector are completely separate entities. The vector changes are what causes g-forces (though in Star Wars there's no need to worry about those), and attitude maneuverability isn't really limited by any relative speed, but vector maneuverability is limited by the acceleration of the ship and thus the turn radius is defined by the velocity in relation to some point of reference. I should probably elaborate that this is the case in real life physics, so it doesn't need to be that way in the game, but some nod to that direction would be great in my opinion.
In a nutshell - in FreeSpace2 and X-Wing series, when your nose points at some direction, you're flying into that direction immediately. In Real life, you need to change the vector as well as attitude. Beyond the Red Line (and, assumedly, Diaspora) and The Babylon Project are somewhere in the middle; neither railroad or newtonian flight dynamics. If railroad physics is zero and full newtonian is ten, I think BtRL is probably at five or six at normal mode and 8-9 at glide mode, TBP is perhaps 4-5 at normal flight, and I think a Star Wars sim would be well placed on, like, something between 2 and 4.
If it is possible, though, I would actually like two flight modes: One where attitude maneuverability is gradually reduced as reference velocity increases in order to keep the attitude and velocity vectors as similar as possible, and a more raw control flight mode where attitude maneuverability isn't limited, but correspondingly at high speeds the attitude and velocity vectors don't equalize as fast due to acceleration limits of the ships so controlled flight at high speeds would require more work. I don't know if I would want to see a full glide toggle on a star wars sim, though; I'll leave that question for the devs to answer.
:)
I agree that I'd like to see the physics at least a little more towards the middle of that bar than the TG games, but I don't feel that true Newtonian physics have a place in a Star Wars sim/game, mostly because that's not how they're depicted in the movies. If anything, we should be more closely modeling atmospheric flight than space flight, and I'd be plenty happy to see the physics of that implemented in the game (sans gravity, of course).
Chief: Yes, I was always interested in aviation and WW2 era airplanes especially.
Chuck Yeager's Air Combat was probably my first love that really got me into PC gaming (that and Commander Keen), and I've been a WWII aviation buff ever since. Can't get enough of the stuff...it's like crack...for geeks.
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OK, we can write-off the speed explanation as a "cruise mode." I don't think jets dogfight at supersonic speeds, but they use all they've got to get within range of the target. The stress put on a craft in complex maneuvers at those speeds would probably tear an aircraft to pieces. Am I right?
Yeah, a fully armored version would be awesome, and useful cosmetic bonus for pre-Rebellion missions.
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Someone was talking about WWII fightercraft only going about 440mph tops. You forgot something. The P-38 could get up to nearly breaking the sound barrier in an extended dive. That's why it had an air brake. So you could slow down enough to control the aircraft again. Because at those speeds it suffered from the old problem of so much air pressure on the control surfaces that a human couldn't exert enough pressure to make them respond. Not to mention the shockwave breaking lift and making the plane do what was called a "near mach tuck". The P-38J lightening was actually equipped with spring assisted air brakes to allow it to slow down and let the pilot regain control.
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Someone was talking about WWII fightercraft only going about 440mph tops. You forgot something. The P-38 could get up to nearly breaking the sound barrier in an extended dive. That's why it had an air brake. So you could slow down enough to control the aircraft again. Because at those speeds it suffered from the old problem of so much air pressure on the control surfaces that a human couldn't exert enough pressure to make them respond. Not to mention the shockwave breaking lift and making the plane do what was called a "near mach tuck". The P-38J lightening was actually equipped with spring assisted air brakes to allow it to slow down and let the pilot regain control.
Yes, that's why I was talking about maximum level flight airspeed as well as the ideal cornering velocity of those planes (the speed at which the rate of turn is at it's greatest) which are far more relevant speeds to know when you try and figure out how fast these planes typically were going.
Of course sustained dives could give a massive boost in airspeed for especially late war aircraft. Heck, there are unsubstantiated reports of Messerschmitt Bf-109's (amongst others) breaking sound barrier in prolonged dive, but obviously the planes were not made for these velocities - including the P-38 Lightning. For most planes, flutter started to occur way before the plane is even close to breaking mach 1.0, and in most cases it would just rip the control surfaces and wing plating off, and then the pilot would be truly and utterly frakked without an ejection seat... P-38 didn't really suffer from flutter (although the late versions were fitted with counterweights on the control surfaces, especially elevator) but other high speed issues like compressibility lockups which you mentioned, and buffeting.
By the way I don't think the P-38 ever had air brakes as such. The early versions suffered from compressibility lockups on elevator at high speeds, making it very difficult to get out of dives past certain speed, and the first attempt to fix it involved the mentioned spring-loaded servos that were triggered when control forces went beyond certain amount, sort of like power steering on the elevator. Turned out the issue was not really that, it was that the compressibility at high speeds caused the center of lift to move backwards (wings lost their lift), which of course meant that there was no way the elevator could get the nose up since the wings weren't producing enough lift and the elevator just couldn't get the angle of attack high enough at this flight condition. This caused undue stresses to the elevator which could simply destroy the tail structure even if you managed to move the elevator itself, which is pretty much what happened to the first test aircraft employed with this "power elevator".
Eventually they solved the center of lift issue with dive flaps, not air brakes. They were devices that simply changed the wing's geometry so that it wouldn't lose the lift at high speeds. They didn't act as air brakes - that would have been counterproductive considering that most of the aerodynamic developement on P-38 was concentrated on getting more speed out of it in a controllable manner. Reducing the speed would've been simple, but tactically futile as the German FW-190's and even Messerschmitts could simply turn their tail and run from them - which they pretty much did until the dive flaps started to be used.
Unfortunately, a bunch of dive flaps en route to England were shot down an an IFF mishap involving the transport plane and an RAF fighter aircraft, so on European theatre the P-38's were delayed from receiving that particular upgrade.
Also, to bring the post to thread context: The P-38 has always sort of felt somehow similar to the Y-Wing to me (or vice versa). I don't know if it's the two engine nacelles or the role of the ship... although in TG's X-Wing trilogy, the Y-Wing is more like Ju-87 than any sort of fighter aircraft. :blah:
:nervous:
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OK, we can write-off the speed explanation as a "cruise mode." I don't think jets dogfight at supersonic speeds, but they use all they've got to get within range of the target. The stress put on a craft in complex maneuvers at those speeds would probably tear an aircraft to pieces. Am I right?
Yeah, a fully armored version would be awesome, and useful cosmetic bonus for pre-Rebellion missions.
Not quite. Jets use full afterburners in dogfights all the time. You need the thrust (though it burns through fuel really fast.)
However, the extremely rapid, high-angle-of-attack maneuvering and turning inherent in a furball means that the craft really never get up much speed. Altitude buys you speed, speed is life, and you're going to have to spend that speed in order to get out of sticky situations and to get to corner velocity.
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OK, we can write-off the speed explanation as a "cruise mode." I don't think jets dogfight at supersonic speeds, but they use all they've got to get within range of the target. The stress put on a craft in complex maneuvers at those speeds would probably tear an aircraft to pieces. Am I right?
Yeah, a fully armored version would be awesome, and useful cosmetic bonus for pre-Rebellion missions.
Not quite. Jets use full afterburners in dogfights all the time. You need the thrust (though it burns through fuel really fast.)
However, the extremely rapid, high-angle-of-attack maneuvering and turning inherent in a furball means that the craft really never get up much speed. Altitude buys you speed, speed is life, and you're going to have to spend that speed in order to get out of sticky situations and to get to corner velocity.
Umm...full afterburners =/= supersonic speeds. Yes they'll use the full thrust available to them during a dogfight, but just because they're using that much thrust doesn't at all mean they're zooming around supersonic the whole time. It's a complicated dance of accelerations, decelerations, turns, climbs, dives, etc.
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That was exactly my point. Which means a special 'cruise mode' is not a great explanation for differing in-and-out of combat speeds, since the same thrust is being used in both modes, it's just being bled off by maneuvering in combat.
Did you read the second paragraph of my post? It's precisely what you said in your post.
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(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v156/vrillusions/cats/kitty-bored-go-sleep.jpg)
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That was exactly my point. Which means a special 'cruise mode' is not a great explanation for differing in-and-out of combat speeds, since the same thrust is being used in both modes, it's just being bled off by maneuvering in combat.
Did you read the second paragraph of my post? It's precisely what you said in your post.
Hmm. You're right. I blame high stress due to being laid off and lack of sleep. Carry on.
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No problem, mate. Sorry if I seemed snappy.
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I think knowing how fast things went in the films is useful but I think that what makes a good film doesn't necessarily make a good computer game.
The speed (and acceleration) of things in films tends to be based on what "looks cool" rather than conforming to any hard metrics. This works well in a film because it's all about creating the right visual effect. However, the result is that films don't have to follow any rules. The maximum acceleration at one point in the sequence can be completely different to another point, and as long as it looks good it doesn't matter.
However, computer games are quite different, they have to have a consistent set of rules to play by. Players are also extremely good at exploiting the rules of a game to their advantage, inventing tactics that best exploit the rules of the game. The result is that you can base the rules of the game exactly on the rules of the films, yet the combat in the game will look nothing like it does in the film.
I once played a Star Trek mod that had replicated impulse power exactly, including rates of acceleration and maximum velocity. It was a terrible game. The reason was that battles became high speed slashing runs. Players would accelerate away at ultra high speed, then turn round towards their targets. When they'd closed into firing range they would perform a massive deceleration and then dump all their weapons on the enemy (typically a large barrage of torpedoes). Then they'd accelerate off to disappear at high speed. Rinse and repeat until the enemy was dead.
This tactic was incredibly effective, as the target had almost no time to react. It was also totally allowed given the (massive) accelerations and maximum speeds of impulse power. However, it looked absolutely nothing like combat in the Star Trek films at all. It also got rather boring to play rather quickly.
So personally I think when making a game you need to come up with rules that "play good", just as films try to "look good". If you want to achieve a particular style of combat (for example the combat seen in the films) then you need to tune your rules to achieve that kind of combat. The speed and acceleration you need to achieve this may be wildly different than what you can observe in the films.
I also think getting combat to look exactly like it does in the films may be impossible. A real human pilot flying according to the rules that are apparent in the Star Wars films would probably have used very different tactics. Real people are incredibly good at exploiting the rules of the game to their advantage. Pilots in films however are flying based on what looks cool in a movie, not based on what was actually a good tactic. In other words the combat in the films may well not look like any real combat ever would. It's likely the best that's achievable in a game is having combat that is "kind of similar" to what we see in the films.
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Also understand that our goal is not to replicate statistics as seen in the movies, but rather, the feel itself. We've already measured things such as acceleration, speed and maneuverability and then tweaked them for the purposes of gameplay. These all contribute to the feel in their own way, but don't make a game by itself. We'd be silly if we wanted to, say, go by their canon statistics which state that each fighter can accelerate several thousand Gs at a time.
I guess the point I'm trying to make is simply this:
Trust us.
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So personally I think when making a game you need to come up with rules that "play good", just as films try to "look good". If you want to achieve a particular style of combat (for example the combat seen in the films) then you need to tune your rules to achieve that kind of combat. The speed and acceleration you need to achieve this may be wildly different than what you can observe in the films.
I also think getting combat to look exactly like it does in the films may be impossible. A real human pilot flying according to the rules that are apparent in the Star Wars films would probably have used very different tactics. Real people are incredibly good at exploiting the rules of the game to their advantage. Pilots in films however are flying based on what looks cool in a movie, not based on what was actually a good tactic. In other words the combat in the films may well not look like any real combat ever would. It's likely the best that's achievable in a game is having combat that is "kind of similar" to what we see in the films.
Yes, that's all true. I don't think anyone really disagrees with that either, people just like different approaches towards more or less the same goal.
Frankly, as someone who plays with what dogfighting test missions we have usually several times every day, I think what we have now is pretty darn good in the "looks and feels like in the films" respect. There's several little details and missing features which still get in the way a bit, but the only bigger problem perhaps in need of a clever solution is the circling fights. They don't fly in circles in SW (with the exception of the falcon and those two interceptors ;)), but of course that's what happens all the time in-game. However, it's not necessarily something that would need to be fixed by tweaking the flight mechanics themselves; there should be other ways to dissuade a pilot from trying to shrug someone off their tail by simply doing steep turns and circles.
For example, currently in FotG you can fly as slow as you like, but it's usually suicide if there's a chance that someone could start shooting at you. So that's an incredibly simple and natural gameplay solution (whether intentional or not) to the problem of things "not looking like in the films" as far as speed is concerned. No one wants to get killed so they tend to keep their speed high just like in the films. So, my point is that making things look and feel like in the films while having interesting gameplay is not just about limiting what each ship can do, it's just as much about encouraging the "right" kind of actions and discouraging the "wrong" kind of actions, even if the player could do anything they like. In your Star Trek mod example, I don't see the problem as being the fact that impulse power was replicated exactly, but instead the fact that they didn't make sure that it could not be abused, which they could have done by putting in some extra rules which would have prevented it and which wouldn't have (seriously) contradicted canon either.
So what I'm trying to say with all this is that if you first make the rules conform to the movies as much as possible and then realize that the resulting gameplay doesn't end up looking like what you see in the movies, it doesn't mean that you need to change those basic rules to fix the gameplay. You also have the option of adding new rules which don't eliminate or change the core rules as such, but instead just add exceptions and limitations to them in order to prevent players from abusing them.
And as brandx0 said, the point isn't to use canon statistics just for the sake of accuracy of the stats themselves, but instead in order to recreate the right look and feel. And as I said, the numbers are just half of what makes the right look and feel; the other part is actually making the "right" actions sensible from a gameplay point of view and the "wrong" ones less so. Of course that's probably the harder part, but I'm pretty confident. ;)
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I'm glad the dev team has a good sense of realism :) I think it's easy to get too carried away with what's canon or what an observed speed is in one section of the movie and forget that at the end of the day the result is to make a game. I've seen other mods get bogged down in this, so it's reassuring that people have got their head screwed on the right way on this one :)
Personally I suspect that 292 m/s (or whatever the speed quote ealier was) is probably going to be too fast for gun based combat. Gun range is probably only going to be a few hundred meters at best as you just can't hit something small and moving fast any further away than that. At 292 m/s that's not a lot of time available for firing. Jet fighters dogfight at substantially less than 292 m/s (probably closer to 180 m/s), even so gun fighting in jets generally involves a lot of turning but not a lot of hitting anything.
@zookeeper: Yes circle fights are a really good example of what I meant. WW2 combat tended to be lots of turning fights, jet dogfighting tends to be turning fights. However in the star wars films most combat actually involves one fighter chasing another and shooting at it. The person being shot at tends to say "I can't shake him!" as they proceed in an almost perfect straight line. Needless to say when you put a real person in that situation then they turn for all they are worth!
So I think that these kind of games will always involve some degree of turning fights, even though you never saw a turning fight in the movies. However, as you say though there is a lot you can do to mitigate it, my preferred strategy here is mission design. Don't create missions that simply involve two sets of ships shooting at each other. Give the two sides conflicting objectives, such as one side has to escort a ship and the other side has to destroy it. That way in order to win players can't just get involved in continuous turning fights, they have to consider their objectives.
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Curiously enough, in many multiplayer servers for IL-2 Sturmovik, the single most effective tactic - vulching, or gun strafing targets on ground - is usually frowned upon if not outright banned...
Even though it is a historically valid tactic. Given the opportunity, I don't think any fighter pilot would have passed the chance to destroy enemy planes before they could take off or during take off. Unless they were low on ammo or fuel.
Point is, it is likely that if there are easily exploitable tactics, it is likely that some people will start calling them lame instead of trying to figure out how to counter them...
However, regarding gun combat... it all depends on weapon accuracy and whether or not dynamic field of view (changeable in flight) is available. On IL-2 Sturmovik, effective gun range starts from about 300-200 metres based on my experiences. You can score individual hits on big targets such as bombers from, say, 500-700 metres if you're good, but it's not reliable and it's a fast way to waste ammunition.
Jet fighters are both bigger and have better aiming devices with lead indicators (pippers or lead slopes) plus higher rate of fire with them nice gattling guns, so the ranges are a bit longer there despite higher speeds, as far as I know.
Considering that WW2 planes and Star Wars fighter craft are roughly the same size, but SW ships have more accurate weapons and aiming systems (lead indicator, assuming it's available in FotG) so I would estimate the effective gun range to be about the same as in WW2 combat; effectively starting from about 300 metres in, regardless of how far the laser bolts actually fly. Although on head-on approaches you would typically start firing pot shots at your opponent as soon as you're in range, while trying to fly evasively at the same time.
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Could we get a figure for say how fast the A-wing has been made? I recall the IRC chat log saying that when you crunched the numbers, it was "flying at the seat of your pants," so I'm curious just how fast craft speeds will be.
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Frankly, as someone who plays with what dogfighting test missions we have usually several times every day, I think what we have now is pretty darn good in the "looks and feels like in the films" respect. There's several little details and missing features which still get in the way a bit, but the only bigger problem perhaps in need of a clever solution is the circling fights. They don't fly in circles in SW (with the exception of the falcon and those two interceptors ;)), but of course that's what happens all the time in-game. However, it's not necessarily something that would need to be fixed by tweaking the flight mechanics themselves; there should be other ways to dissuade a pilot from trying to shrug someone off their tail by simply doing steep turns and circles.
For example, currently in FotG you can fly as slow as you like, but it's usually suicide if there's a chance that someone could start shooting at you. So that's an incredibly simple and natural gameplay solution (whether intentional or not) to the problem of things "not looking like in the films" as far as speed is concerned. No one wants to get killed so they tend to keep their speed high just like in the films. So, my point is that making things look and feel like in the films while having interesting gameplay is not just about limiting what each ship can do, it's just as much about encouraging the "right" kind of actions and discouraging the "wrong" kind of actions, even if the player could do anything they like. In your Star Trek mod example, I don't see the problem as being the fact that impulse power was replicated exactly, but instead the fact that they didn't make sure that it could not be abused, which they could have done by putting in some extra rules which would have prevented it and which wouldn't have (seriously) contradicted canon either.
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Of course there will be turning fights, that's what dogfighting is. Will it be possible to pull some tricks like hitting the "brakes" and having your opponent overshoot you or pulling some aerial maneuver to get the upper hand? This would provide more options to dogfighting than just simply out-turning a bandit but also outsmarting them as well.
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Could we get a figure for say how fast the A-wing has been made? I recall the IRC chat log saying that when you crunched the numbers, it was "flying at the seat of your pants," so I'm curious just how fast craft speeds will be.
The a-wing's top speed is currently 250, but can get to 300 if you transfer all power to engines. When you buzz past stationary targets at that speed, it's...pretty fast. You can still pepper a target you're flying past with a volley of laser fire at that speed, but it has quite a hit-and-run feel to it.
Let's hope we'll get a new gameplay video up sometime soon.
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Frankly, as someone who plays with what dogfighting test missions we have usually several times every day, I think what we have now is pretty darn good in the "looks and feels like in the films" respect. There's several little details and missing features which still get in the way a bit, but the only bigger problem perhaps in need of a clever solution is the circling fights. They don't fly in circles in SW (with the exception of the falcon and those two interceptors ;)), but of course that's what happens all the time in-game. However, it's not necessarily something that would need to be fixed by tweaking the flight mechanics themselves; there should be other ways to dissuade a pilot from trying to shrug someone off their tail by simply doing steep turns and circles.
For example, currently in FotG you can fly as slow as you like, but it's usually suicide if there's a chance that someone could start shooting at you. So that's an incredibly simple and natural gameplay solution (whether intentional or not) to the problem of things "not looking like in the films" as far as speed is concerned. No one wants to get killed so they tend to keep their speed high just like in the films. So, my point is that making things look and feel like in the films while having interesting gameplay is not just about limiting what each ship can do, it's just as much about encouraging the "right" kind of actions and discouraging the "wrong" kind of actions, even if the player could do anything they like. In your Star Trek mod example, I don't see the problem as being the fact that impulse power was replicated exactly, but instead the fact that they didn't make sure that it could not be abused, which they could have done by putting in some extra rules which would have prevented it and which wouldn't have (seriously) contradicted canon either.
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Of course there will be turning fights, that's what dogfighting is.
Well, part of the "problem" I guess is that you actually never see a 1-on-1 dogfight in the movies where both ships would actually get a shot at each other. It's always just one ship chasing the other, with the chased ship getting blown up by the chaser or the chaser getting blown up by someone else. So when we have 1-on-1 dogfights it's necessarily going to feel at least just a little bit different than in the movies.
But then again, I'm probably one of the people who have spent the most time watching the same movie scenes over and over again hundreds of times, so my idea of what "looks and feels like in the movies" is most likely somewhat more strict than that of most other people.
Will it be possible to pull some tricks like hitting the "brakes" and having your opponent overshoot you or pulling some aerial maneuver to get the upper hand? This would provide more options to dogfighting than just simply out-turning a bandit but also outsmarting them as well.
I've managed to kill myself several times by slowing down and having a chasing TIE smash into my ship, killing me in the process but then happily flying away himself, does that count? :P
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Is that 250 metres per second? if so, that sounds cool. I fly A-wings in Star Wars Galaxies with my character Leaph Chausew and I believe my current ship does 170 metres per second unboosted (I'm not sure how easily comparable speed is in two different games...but still), and it feels pretty quick.
I must say that I am totally willing to trust the devs for this game, though. From what I've read, it seems that your ideas are exactly what I would want an X-wing game's designers to have. I eagerly anticipate this game's release; however, I'm happy to be patient if it's as good as I hope it should be. I'd just hate to see it get cancelled/abandoned like so many other promising projects.
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i think the source of difficulty here is that none of the movies feature a 1v1 dogfight.
episode 2 doesn't really count, and obi-wan did not want to kill the fetts. and is prequel trilogy :lol:
in all ofther instnaces of spacebourne battles, i think its safe to assue that due to the sheer amount of action occouring, and two fighters in a turning fight at low speed would be easy prey for oursiders, and this excuse can work for 'i can't shake him!' occourances, given the TIE is more agile than the rebel fighter(s).
but we can't asses the games mechanics UNTIL WE PLAY IT...
is it safe to assume, leaph, that your galaxies character is on starstrider...
...but i don't play MMORPG's anymore, before this train of thoguht goes much further. never a fan of the sheer amount of time and RPG-ness 'you must grind this much XP to fly that x-wing you bought months ago'
flight mechanics were solid, though, in my limited PvE expirence in it.
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The biggest reason I can see for us having to nerf the speeds is hit detection in multi. Even at FS2 speeds, you sometimes have to put a significant lead on the faster fighters to hit them. With a ship going 4x as fast as a Perseus...well, you get the picture. Unless we find another way to solve that, hitting anything with a ping of more than 75 could be damn near impossible.
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The biggest reason I can see for us having to nerf the speeds is hit detection in multi. Even at FS2 speeds, you sometimes have to put a significant lead on the faster fighters to hit them. With a ship going 4x as fast as a Perseus...well, you get the picture. Unless we find another way to solve that, hitting anything with a ping of more than 75 could be damn near impossible.
Client-side hit detection? I know...it's generally not used because it has the potential to be abused by cheaters, but that would at least be a step in the right direction. Though I have no idea how possible it would be to make such a huge change in the FS engine...
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The biggest reason I can see for us having to nerf the speeds is hit detection in multi. Even at FS2 speeds, you sometimes have to put a significant lead on the faster fighters to hit them. With a ship going 4x as fast as a Perseus...well, you get the picture. Unless we find another way to solve that, hitting anything with a ping of more than 75 could be damn near impossible.
Client-side hit detection? I know...it's generally not used because it has the potential to be abused by cheaters, but that would at least be a step in the right direction. Though I have no idea how possible it would be to make such a huge change in the FS engine...
but then you start say bull**** to waht seem like fake hits on your side.
double-edgeed sword, it is....
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True, but I believe it's what Valve moved Half-Life to back in the 1.1.0.0 update, and it worked out for the better in the long run. But it would probably require a significant netplay overhaul, perhaps even a complete gutting, which would likely be more difficult due to the lack of complete code separation. The graphics is affected by this so I'm assuming the net code is to some extent as well.
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Will it be possible to pull some tricks like hitting the "brakes" and having your opponent overshoot you or pulling some aerial maneuver to get the upper hand? This would provide more options to dogfighting than just simply out-turning a bandit but also outsmarting them as well.
Ok, the hitting the brakes move works mainly with new jet planes (and Top Gun. Not a great idea IMO as it can bleed off far too much E, and if you miss the shot, you have less E than your opponent, and are then at a disadvantage.), due to being rotate beyond their Angle of Attack and use the entire plane as an airbrake. However, there are many different ways to work an overshoot, including the rolling scissors, using your craft's superior engine or acceleration to rope a opponent, or (in the case of TBP) initiating glide mode, rotating your craft so you are pointed in a direction that is roughly greater than 90 degrees from your previous heading, and engaging your afterburners. However, the second method is negated due to the lack of significant gravitational effects and air resistance in space, and by the fact that your engines allow you to keep "climbing" till the cows come home. Even so, I have found that BFM, ACM, and ACT are not only applicable in space, but required. Even doing something as simple as setting up a merge can give you an advantage over heading directly head-on.
Great site to read up on basic tactics, as well as some of the finer stuff: http://www.netaces.org/ (http://www.netaces.org/)
However, some of the tactics mentioned in the various topics are not applicable at all to space combat sims.
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I can see how many tactics wouldn't apply in a zero-G environment, because there's no resistance in a vacuum, therefore, you don't lose E pulling maneuvers and altitude is non-existent. Of course, if Newtonian physics were applied, then there's a whole new set of combat maneuvers to know, but aerial combat applied to space loses a lot of its aspects.